Here is an edited verson of a short correspondence I've just had with a complete stranger who contacted me via this website:
Dear Cdre Thompson,
I work at SSS Gears, selling SSS Clutches. Given your engineer status, I am going to assume you know what that means. I read your book a while ago in the spirit of absorbing everything in the public domain about future opportunities and how flexible operation makes our kit useful for future systems. Company urban legends exist of course, however the real truth or matters that we do not know, are often a different story. Books like yours and Silent Service were an enormous help and I can now speak slightly more confidently, so thank you!
Why your book was so helpful?.... I first learned of your book via a review in Iain Ballantine's Warship magasine which outlined the prologue and the opening SCRAM dit / steam dilemma. After reading your excellent book, learning of your options and respective dilemmas, I started thinking about how that might be dealt with in more recent machinery. Regardless of whether or not solutions we might be able to generate are plausible and practical for that same dilemma, that your book started the useful thought process in the first place is why I owe you thanks. You also made sacrifices and faced daunting risk to help hide a 130m long steel tube, giving myself, family and friends the deterrent safety necessary to help ensure peace. So thank you, again.
I am not a submariner. I have learned from others who are, however, offering personal and professional advice; so I remain in awe of their service, like yours. I wrote your excellent risk comparison of motor car vs. rifles vs. nuclear weapons, in the front of one of my personal notebooks, along with the CND "poor bloody infantry" analogy. Thought pieces like that are extremely good contemplative points from which to reinforce my personal position to always push the extra mile, such that future safety for my children remains in front of commercial success and gross profit.
That you class yourself as a mongrel dinosaur engineer who drove nuclear reactors, is a charming oxymoron. Similar to Patrick Moore classing himself as an "amateur" astronomer because he didn't actually walk on the moon. To be clear, I contacted you to thank you for the above, not to seek your support or help. Either way, you are most welcome at SSS if you ever venture down here. People like me never forget.
Warmest regards,
Nicholas Bellamy
My reply:
Dear Nicholas,
Thank you for such kind words. You make me feel very humble. As an engineer, it has always been very clear to me that I was merely one arm of UK Ltd. Without our British industrial and scientific base, we would still be throwing stones at the Russians. I have just as much respect for the role played by industrialists like you as you seem to have for submariners.
His reply:
Your “without industrialists like you / throwing stones at the Russians” quote will be on the company notice board on Monday morning. Another thank you; thank you!
Nicholas Bellamy
Comment
I wrote 'On Her Majesty's Nuclear Service' because I felt that 99% of the British public had no idea or any thoughts on what the submariners out on strategic deterrent patrol were doing on their behalves, let alone that we were helping to prevent World War 3. The vast bulk of publicity and political discourse on the subject was predominantly anti-nuclear. Nuclear deterrence had been demoted in public opinion from insurance policy to 'nuclear bad' and 'deterrence a waste of money'. (Many have changed their minds now that Putin's Russia has invaded Ukraine). It has been immensely rewarding to receive unsoilicited letters of thanks like the above.
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